The design and use of bi-colored light for determining water levels in steam boilers is well taught and documented in the art. Traditionally, incandescent light is passed through colored lenses as the light source. These designs suffer from numerous deficiencies in their fragility, efficiency, power requirements and life span. An incandescent light source utilizes a fragile filament operating at high temperature. This filament can easily become damaged and break when subjected to continued vibration. In addition, the high operating temperature of the filament limits the life span of the incandescent light. The same incandescent light source requires a high level of power to operate and only a small percentage of this power is converted to usable light. The remaining power is lost, predominantly as heat.
Numerous liquid level indicators can be found in the art to which the present invention provides advances. U.S. Pat. No. 2,510,729 describes an indicating gauge in which a vertical column containing both water and steam includes a multitude of bores which pass horizontally through the column and allow for visual inspection of the contents of the column present at the corresponding level. An operator is able to inspect and determine the level at which the contents of the column shift from water to steam.
In U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,024,815 and 2,115,889, indicators that utilize the reflective and refractive properties of water, steam and light are revealed. In each case, the operator inspects the individual gauges within a plurality of gauges and is able to determine the water/steam level by observing a color change associated with the level corresponding to the change from water to steam. The device of U.S. Pat. No. 2,115,889 provides an additional means to visually inspect the gauge at a greater distance, more specifically, at a position located far below the gauge. The light is provided in each of these devices via an incandescent light source.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,836,022 describes a bi-color fluviograph for use in steam boilers and provides improvement to the intensity of light provided from the light source and includes benefits aimed at reducing the frequency of maintenance of the fluviograph. The light is provided by a flourescent lamp and the colors are introduced via two planes, one painted red, and the other green. The fluviograph increases the intensity of the red light to allow for its operation in murky or turbulent water conditions that would render most previous devices inoperable. A further advantage is that the device need not be cleaned as frequently. Traditionally, the impurities in the water contained within the boiler would deposit on the lens and gradually reduce the effective light transmitted. This effect is lessened by increasing the light intensity.